An article based on recent Leadership Circle Events
Meet Jo. An accomplished, seasoned leader currently in the CEO role of a high paced, fast-growing tech company. Jo is well-known in the C-Suite circles, regularly featured in numerous articles and magazines for the ability to rapidly transition start-up tech companies to scalable, efficient, and agile organizations that achieve envious results.
This new role is Jo’s first time leading a 100% fully remote business. During the last two years of the pandemic, there has been exponential growth and demand for the company’s technology platforms and services. In the last year alone, under Jo’s leadership, the organization has doubled in size, raised over $150M in investment funds, grown the customer base by 400%, and acquired multiple auxiliary lines of business.
Despite Jo’s career accomplishments and the more recent successes leading during the unprecedented challenges of the pandemic, Jo worries. Jo’s thoughts are constantly preoccupied, toggling between questions around culture in a fully remote environment, the impact of world events on employees’ well-being, cyber risks, digital noise, staying ahead of the completive landscape, and navigating impending political instabilities.
Despite a sound and supportive investor and leadership team, Jo feels the pressure, the demands, the weight of these leadership challenges. Jo feels encompassed with self-doubt, constantly wondering, “am I asking myself the right questions? is there something I am missing? am I doing the same things I have always done?” While Jo is well accustomed to working with an executive leadership coach, Jo knows this isn’t enough and that new or additional avenues of support are needed to navigate these unique and complex challenges.
Loneliness is a required course for leadership. — Elisabeth Elliot
The role of leadership brings with it a host of strategic, operational, and tactical worries. Anything from managing day-to-day work, wrestling complex vexing challenges, capitalizing on growth opportunities, pivoting the business, staying connected to customers, managing uncertainty, and pursuing change can consume the minds of leaders. And every day, there seem to be new topics to be added to this ever-expanding list.
Data from the C-Suite Challenge 2021: Leading in a Post COVID-19 Recovery by Harvard Law School cited COVID-19, recession risk, vaccine availability, and changing consumer behavior as the highest impact external environmental concerns of leaders. Turning inward, they noted accelerated digital transformation, improving innovation, and evolving business models as some of the top focus areas leaders were pursuing.
With all this data and all these concerns, there is no doubt that there is a heaviness to the role of leadership. Leaders need to show up as visionary, confident, courageous, and driven while balancing complex, unique, and ambiguous challenges. This can make the position feel isolated, lonely, and vulnerable.
So is there a leadership crisis looming? How do you help leaders solve the multitude of unique and complex challenges they face?
There is one particularly interesting trend in the DDI article on 4 Key Trends in Leadership.
“CEOs and executives need more development and support.”
The article cites, “CEOs typically have extensive experience in leadership before assuming their roles in the C-suite. This is what feeds the perception that CEOs always have the right answer. And this could be flattering for leaders at the C-level. But this could also be damaging in that many CEOs may feel they need to have all the answers.”
Consider:
Where do CEOs and executives get support in their role as leaders?Who do they draw on to help them think through the complex challenges they face?How can they get help to ignite and kick-start thinking that will lead to innovation on multifaceted issues?
Introducing the Leadership Circle
Participant Quote: “The Leadership Circle is a unique experience. Rarely, if ever, do you have an opportunity to present a vexing challenge to people outside of your problem and listen to them talk about it. It gives you a new vantage point on the problem you are trying to solve”
The Leadership Circle is a gathering of leaders, held virtually, and focused on helping one of these leaders, fondly referred to as the presenter, unlock ideas about a particular challenge they are facing. The leaders are from varying industries, at differing stages of their leadership journey, and they may not have met before joining the session.
However, they do have in common the similarity in gravity, magnitude, depth, and breadth of the challenges they face. They also possess the humility, openness, and vulnerability to share, ask for help, and seek out ideas and inspirations. These values are imperative for the success of the Circle. The Circle is not a gathering of leaders invited to give advice on a specific topic. They are not in the role of expert, coach, or mentor to the presenter. In reality, the Circle members do not know the challenge or the question to be considered before the session begins.
The Circle starts with the presenter sharing the issue they are struggling with and where they are with their thinking. Then, the presenter formulates and poses a single question to the others in the Circle.
At this point, the other Circle members draw from their experiences, learnings, and ideas to share their best thoughts in service of the question. Doing this in a very particular way, they use only language of wisdom when they contribute. They use specific words and phrasing such as “there was a time when… this made me think about…” The language of wisdom allows the presenter to listen and absorb without feeling judged or directed towards a specific solution. Instead, it enables the presenter to deepen and extend thinking on the issue leading them to further ideas and thoughts both in and after the session.
The session ends with a shower of appreciation for the humility and grace with which the presenter has stepped forward. This appreciation encourages the presenter to continue their thinking after the Circle has ended.
Presenter Quote: “I continued to think about the challenge and the unique ideas that were shared with me well after the hour was over. Three days later, I was still having new insights about my issue. The Circle was an incredible experience to help me think about a difficult situation. I felt supported and encouraged by the peers (whom I had never met before) who had gathered to share experiences and ideas in service of my problem.
What’s Unique about the Leadership Circle Experience?
Encouraging and Embracing Emergence over Action
What gets measured gets improved — Peter Drucker
We live in a world where we are taught that accountability and action commitment is the only way to drive changes and results. However, the Circle offers a different experience. It is a move away from decisive action and articulating commitments and a move towards generative thinking.
You will notice that the Circle ended with a shower of appreciation, not with feedback from the presenter on what they were going to do or what action they were going to take. In actuality, the presenter is under no obligation or pressure to share with the circle members if any of their ideas were helpful, any new ideas that arose for them, or precisely what they might do post the session. The presenter owns the problem, and they own the solution. We trust and believe that the challenge is so significant that they will continue to think about the best way to move forward and try new ways of approaching the concern. While this may leave members of the Circle feeling somewhat dissatisfied, it leaves the presenter with an influx of ideas that take on a generative momentum of their own and continue to build and develop well after the session is over.
This is the ultimate intent, to unleash ideas and inspirations for the presenter in an experience where they are supported, acknowledged, and encouraged.
Learning to Listen Differently
“Listening is a leadership responsibility” — Oscar Trimboli
The design of the Leadership Circle asks the leaders who have gathered to change their default listening position. Instead of listening for clarity of content, they listen and are curious about context. More often than not, as listeners, we seek more and more clarity around the details or content of the issue. Questions grounded in seeking content clarity encourage the thinker to get deeper inside the problem rather than encouraging them to step back and look at the issue from new perspectives and angles. By shifting listening towards context we are promoting a shift in perspective.
The Circle members receive limited details around the issue’s content, enough for them to understand where the thinker is with their thinking and what makes the challenge unique and vexing. With that, they draw from their experiences and share ideas that can inspire more profound thought for the presenter.
The presenter also shifts their listening by moving into an incognito role when Circle members begin sharing ideas and experiences. This means the presenter is on mute and off video (if the session is virtual). In this way, the Circle members are not influenced by unconscious reactions to their ideas. Instead, they can share without fear of judgment. And the presenter can receive new thinking without needing to comment, reinforce or explain a perspective in response to what is emerging.
These shifts in listening levels encourage more presence, focus, generative and insightful thinking of the Circle members and the presenter in the middle.
Shaping Curiosities
“Curiosity and questions will get you further than confidence and answers” — Maxime Lagace
Most leaders are tuned into the skill and the benefits of reframing issues and challenges into provocative questions. They understand and revel in the presence of a question that has breadth and depth, questions that “travel well,” as facilitators call them. These questions kick-start an avalanche of ideas and insights that take on energy.
In the Leadership Circle, the presenter articulates an initial question that they would like the others to consider. Following any clarifying questions from the Circle members, the presenter is encouraged to reshape their posing question. This is a tipping point moment. Here, the presenter’s question suddenly takes on a different angle, a slight shift in focus which further liberates ideas from the circle members. Staying curious all through the Circle experience is a unique way of connecting, exploring, and working together that takes the presenter’s thinking to new levels.
Looking into the Future
The fast-paced, ever-changing world where we are today means that leaders need to be well equipped to embrace complex challenges. They need to find support, enlightenment and, encouragement to help them thrive in this role.
The Leadership Circle is not the only way or place where leaders can find this. However, it offers an experience where progressive and humble leaders can find an untapped source of inspiration. The Circle provides a gathering that is both inclusive and diverse.
It builds camaraderie and community with leaders who seek to lead and live with heart, humility, and hope.
Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much. — Helen Keller
This article is based on recent Leadership Circle events held and hosted by Inflection Consulting Ltd. If you are interested in finding out more or participating in an upcoming Leadership Circle, please reach out to the Inflection Consulting Team at info@inflection.cc
About the author, Tricia Conyers is a collaborator and partner with Inflection Consulting Ltd.. She is also the founder of Island Inspirations Ltd.
